A new minimum wage for Canton? One councilman hopes so

Councilman John Mariol, D-7, wants Canton to join a growing number of U.S. cities that are trying to raise the minimum wage.

Matthew Rink CantonRep.com staff writer @mrinkREP

Tamara Crable works a full-time job as a home health aide and is trying to support her three young children on the minimum-wage salary she is paid.

It's a better gig than the one she had recently as a restaurant waitress earning $3 an hour plus tips, but still not enough to give her kids the life they deserve, Crable says.

"I feel like I'm working for nothing," said the 27-year-old Crable, who plans to go back to school next year for her nursing degree. "I'm not looking for $20 or $30 an hour. I just want to be comfortable and not have to worry about living paycheck to paycheck and not have to ask people to help me with a bill.

"I want my kids to do better and have more than I did growing up," said Crable, who has reluctantly relied on government assistance and loans from family members to make ends meet.

Crable is working with Stand Up For Ohio, a Democratic-leaning organization, to convince federal lawmakers to raise the country's minimum wage.

However, Canton City Councilman John Mariol is hoping the city can establish its own minimum wage so that local workers don't have to wait for the federal government to act. Canton would be the first city in Ohio to take such a step.

NO SPECIFICS

Mariol, D-7, says he will propose the idea in January when he begins his second term on council. Mariol has not offered a specific proposal, including the size of increase he would like to see, but has said he would like to exempt small businesses if possible. Ohio's minimum wage is $7.85 an hour, 60 cents higher than the federal minimum wage.

Council President Allen Schulman also advocated increasing the city's minimum wage at a council meeting Nov. 18. Schulman's remarks came as news went viral about a Canton Wal-Mart's Thanksgiving food collection for its own employees. The food drive prompted more scrutiny for the retail giant about how much it pays employees.

Wal-Mart officials responded by saying the food drive was a sign of generosity meant to help down-and-out workers and has been taken out of context. Wal-Mart says it pays on average $12.87 an hour. The Organization United for Respect at Wal-Mart, which advocates for workers of the retailer, says wages range between $8 and $10 an hour.

Mariol has been discussing the concept with the Canton Law Department for about five months but stayed mum about the idea until recently.

"It's impossible to live on minimum wage," Mariol said. "You're either not able to pay your bills and are homeless on minimum wage or you have to take advantage of social programs this country has. It doesn't seem right if you work a full-time job that you're not able to pay for the basic things every person has to, like food and transportation to and from work."

Twenty states have adopted minimum-wage rates higher than the federal rate, including Ohio, which did so in 2006. But there also are a growing number of U.S. cities that have done so, said Paul K. Sonn of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), an advocacy group based in New York City.

TRENDING

Residents of SeaTac, Wash., voted Nov. 6 to raise the minimum wage for hospitality and transportation workers in and around the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to $15 an hour, according to reports.

It joined San Francisco, which previously had the highest minimum wage in the country at $10.55 an hour, Albuquerque, N.M., which set its wage at $8.50 — a dollar above the state — for employees without health- or child-care benefits and Santa Fe, N.M., among others.

Washington, D.C., Council wants to raise its wage from $8.25 to $11.50 an hour, while Mayor Vincent Gray is proposing a $10 minimum wage and to eliminate all future automatic increases. The debate there comes two months after Gray vetoed the Large Retailer Accountability Act that would have forced Wal-Mart and other retailers with corporate sales of $1 billion or more and operating in at least 75,000 square feet of store space to pay workers $12.50 an hour in wages and benefits.

Wal-Mart, according to the Washington Post, threatened to scrap plans for three of its six stores in D.C.

"There's been a new wave of action with mayors, city councils or activists proposing a higher minimum wage," said Sonn, who has studied the impact of municipal minimum wage ordinances on communities across the country.

They tend to fall into two categories, Sonn said. Some cities have enacted higher minimum wages because their cost of living is drastically more than the rest of the state. Other lawmakers have grown tired of waiting for state and federal officials to raise the rate.

"They're enacting higher minimum wages as a way to take the issue into their own hands and potentially push the legislature to raise the state wage," said Sonn, citing cities and counties in New Mexico where such a grassroots push is taking place.

DEBATE

Proponents of a higher minimum wage argue that rates have not kept up with inflation and that paying more will lead to a stronger economy because it will lift millions of people out of poverty. Opponents argue that the minimum wage will only cause businesses to lay off workers and that a bulk of those workers tend to be young and not in poverty to begin with.

Dennis Saunier, executive director of the Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce, said in an email that he did not have enough information about Mariol's proposal, but noted that it could mean "slower job growth among existing Canton businesses and reluctance by businesses to come into the city."

Gordon Gough, president and CEO of The Ohio Council of Retail Merchants, said a higher minimum wage could be detrimental to businesses in Canton.

"Employers in retail and other industries have very slim margins, so increasing their No. 1 cost in labor could lead to layoffs, and create less jobs," he said. "Employers wouldn't be able to have more employees because they have to pay the ones they have more."

Gough doesn't believe a citywide minimum wage is possible because of the Ohio Constitutional amendment in 2006 that tied annual state minimum wage increases to the U.S. Consumer Price Index. The Ohio Department of Commerce is responsible for enforcing the state's minimum wage.

Susan Cave, executive director of the Ohio Municipal League, said she never has heard any Ohio city lawmaker discuss the idea before.

FEDERAL PUSH

Democratic lawmakers are already pushing for a federal minimum wage hike from the current $7.25 an hour to $10.10. President Barack Obama threw his support behind the idea last month. However, it appears to be a "long shot" that the proposal will go anywhere, said Amy Hanauer, executive director of Policy Matters Ohio, which has advocated for an increase.

Hanauer said the minimum wage is far less valuable than it was at its peak.

"We have grown much more productive as an economy since that time," she said, referring to 1968, when the minimum wage was most valuable in terms of the cost of living. "It hasn't kept pace either with inflation or productivity growth."

Fewer jobs support a family today, she said. Over the last generation, there has been more emphasis placed on the number of jobs in the economy that can support a family.

Hanauer said local officials tend to be more sympathetic to workers' causes because they are more in touch with such people and see how "decent wages are circulated within the community."

"It doesn't surprise me that creative local elected officials are trying to think about job quality with the tools they have," she said.

LIVING WAGE

If Mariol can't have his way in establishing a minimum wage for the city, he at least wants to require the city and any company receiving tax breaks or other incentives from it to pay workers more than the state minimum.

Cleveland, Lakewood, Cincinnati, Dayton and Toledo are among the cities with living wage laws, which require businesses that are awarded public contracts or which receive tax incentives to pay their workers more. There are 120 cities with similar living wage laws across the country, according to NELP.

"If it can't be wide-reaching it will be smaller," Mariol said. "We all wonder why the economy is sluggish and not growing. You can point to wages not increasing. If people don't have money to spend, the economy is not going to grow."